Wednesday, 10th October 2007

Shanghai F1 support race

Qualifying – For the qualifying we are allowed to use 2 new sets of tires. Some people choose not to run both and save one set for the race, but we chose to use both because we haven’t had much practice on the track. The first set the time lap time was around 2:14.7 which was about third place. After three laps the team called me in to change to the second set of new tires. The first lap on the new tires was really good it would have been second place, but in the last corner I made a small mistake so I ended up third for the first race, but my second best lap time was good enough to put me in 2nd for the second race on Sunday.

Race 1 – Started 3rd but didn’t get the best of starts, and lost 2 positions before the first corner. After that was just settling down in fifth waiting to make my move until someone spilled gear oil all over the track. Of course I was lucky enough to drive right over it which made the car loose all its grip and spin. I was able to hold on to 5th position, but was just to far from the front pack, so I was mostly racing with myself for the rest of the race. Finished 5th. Race 2 –Started 2nd. The track was semi wet, very damp. The whole field chose to run on wet tires, so I decided to do the same, as I didn’t want to run any risks. Had a good start, was trying to force 1st (Jazeman) place on the outside on the first corner so he could run wide, unfortunately for me the fastest line was out there so he pulled a small gap right from the beginning. On the second corner I lost out to 3rd place (Sebastian). After that I was struggling to keep up with the first 2 cars because our setup was not the same. The winner of the race was about 2 seconds faster than me and Jazeman, so I just had to settle for third place as that was the fastest the car could do.